Loving Sin Is Hating Life

If you are a regular reader of this blog, you know I don’t rail against things we should hate as much as I try to proclaim what we are called to love. But sometimes we must address—because Scripture and the Christian classics remind us—that loving the wrong thing can destroy us. Much of the Christian journey could be described as learning to love what is lovely and hate what is hateful.

None of us come to this naturally; it is a gift of God that we are enabled to see how so many of our desires, if not impeded by God and redirected by God, could ruin us. And the hatred people feel toward those who point this out—even if it is done from the motivation of love, with great gentleness and grace—is evidence of how fiercely deceived we can be by our wayward desires. Gollum may be the most theologically astute character in literature—threaten my precious (even though it holds me in bondage) and “I hates you.”

Sometimes we need a hard but clear word, and that hard but clear word today is that to love sin is to hate life. Encouraging anyone to continue in their sin is to leave them in a bed of putrefaction (decay, decomposition, rot). Belief in Christianity is essential, but it’s not sufficient; the spiritual person isn’t merely a dichotomy of belief and unbelief, but also one who is living and not dead.

In Acts 11:18 the apostles marvel that “Even to Gentiles God has granted repentance that leads to life.” Repentance that leads to life. We could also stress the opposite: repentance that leads to life. No repentance, no life. No life, no repentance. They are like water and wet and cannot exist without each other.

In a Christian classic whose title makes it unlikely to be read by many (Devotions Upon Emergent Occasions Together with Death’s Duel) John Donne follows the progression of a devout believer who is grievously ill, even to the point of being on death’s threshold. Spoiler alert (for the two of you who might be tempted to dive in)—the believer survives (it caught me by surprise—I honestly didn’t expect this) and Donne makes the analogy between rising from the death bed physically to rising from the death bed spiritually: “Thou hast also made this bodily rising, by thy grace, an earnest of a second resurrection from sin, and of a third, to everlasting glory.”

Just as a sick person entreats a doctor to deliver them from bodily ills, so the believer entreats God to deliver us from our spiritual ills. We don’t just want to get out of bed—we want to get out of our sickness. In the same way, we don’t just want to get out of hell—we want to get out of our sin. You aren’t a healthy Christian if you don’t want to be rid of your sin more than you want to be rid of hell, because sin is hell manifesting itself in the present.

Donne again: “I have a bed of sin; delight in sin is a bed: I have a grave of sin; senselessness of sin is a grave: and where Lazarus had been four days, I have been fifty years in this putrefaction.”

He chastises himself—as should we all!—that he has put up with his sin nonsense for half a century. It took a serious illness to show him how spiritually sick he was—the foolishness of it, the stench of it, the disgusting nature of it. Through facing a near physical death, this believer recognizes he has been living in a spiritual grave. Think of that image—living in a grave! That’s so disgusting, and such an accurate picture of living in our sin.

No one is a friend who tells me to stay in the grave when Jesus offers me resurrection. That person is my enemy who tells me I should be satisfied by death and fever and body aches when Jesus invites me to live an abundant life.

Jesus asked several people: “What do you want me to do for you?” What do you want Jesus to do for you? So many would say, “Deliver me from hell when I die,” not realizing that this means delivering them from sin while they live because sin is hell made manifest.

One of the reasons I hesitate to write or preach stuff like this is that it seems self-righteous—like I am proclaiming my own holiness just because I can see the beauty of holiness. But Donne gives me the courage to see past that. Those who most see the horror of sin are usually those who are most aware of the reality of their own sin—and they don’t deny it. No man or woman is a hero against sin; only Jesus is the perfect overcomer of sin. Donne speaks of the state of humankind, “subject to infinite weaknesses,” and likely to “fall into infinite sin without any foreign temptations.” I don’t need any help or temptation to sin; I live on a slippery slide every day. I do need hourly help for holiness. Which means, if I don’t actively seek that help, I am passively falling.

We are weak and God is strong. We love death even as God calls us to life. We are drawn to the sin that destroys us while God sometimes gently and sometimes forcefully calls us to holiness. To love sin is to love death. To love sin is to love spiritual decay and spiritual rot.

Climbing out of your sin is like climbing out of a spiritual grave. Don’t dismiss it as merely “medicating yourself.” Understand the allure of sin to arm yourself, of course, but don’t lose the horror of sin along the way. Shame doesn’t help, but hatred for sin does. And thank God, we have a Savior, a deliverer, and a redeemer. He is our only hope. He removes our shame and our sin. Don’t settle for one without the other.